Strategy-driven Target Operating Model transformation

Background

A leading UK-focused private bank identified a strategic imperative to optimise its operating model in response to shifting business priorities. Following several years of structural change in the wider banking sector and heightened competitive pressures, the organisation’s leadership sought to consolidate its investment management operations into a UK hub to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance client service delivery.

PryceWilliams was engaged to support the strategic transition, bringing experience in designing Target Operating Models (TOM) and delivering large-scale transformations.

Approach

The key challenge lay in redesigning and implementing the Target Operating Model while ensuring minimal disruption to business-as-usual activities, maintaining governance and control, and embedding processes in the new UK-based structure.

By leveraging our Target Operating Model assessment framework, we applied a structured and delivery-focused approach that included:

• Business case development
• Current-state analysis and future-state design
• Project delivery and BAU handover

Analysis

Business case development

• Supported the client in preparing a business case that estimated the project cost at c. £1m, with delivery over 18 months and forecasted annual savings of £1.5–£2m.

Current-state analysis and future-state design

To develop the Target Operating Model, we identified 16 interlinked components, which provided a comprehensive view of the organisation’s operating model. These components were used to:

• Conduct a detailed current-state analysis of investment management operations in the legacy location, including organisation design, systems architecture, and process flows.
• Design the UK-based future state capable of supporting the required activities, with integrated processes and governance aligned to strategic goals.

Project delivery

• Transitioned investment management operations from the overseas hub to the UK, ensuring minimal disruption to business-as-usual activities.
• Successfully decommissioned operations in the legacy jurisdiction, managing dependencies, contracts, and risk mitigation activities.
• Completed the transition with full documentation, training, and embedding of processes into the UK team’s business-as-usual operations.

Conclusions

PryceWilliams’ implementation of the Target Operating Model delivered the following outcomes for our client:

• Expected annual cost savings of £3.2m, exceeding the initial projection by £1.2m.
• Successful delivery of the project, three months ahead of schedule.
• Enhancements made to procedures and process documentation, with potential to automate manual steps and unlock further time and cost savings.

This transformation demonstrated the value of aligning operating models with strategic drivers, ensuring sustainable benefits in efficiency, control, and profitability.

Recommendations

Based on lessons learned from this engagement, PryceWilliams recommends applying the PW TOM assessment framework as the foundation for any major strategic change initiative. Our framework ensures the full impact of strategic drivers is understood and translated into an executable, future-proofed operating model. The assessment involves:

• Current state review – Analysis of processes, systems, controls, and organisation design across the 16 TOM components.
• Future state design – Development of an integrated model aligned to strategic goals and regulatory obligations.
• Gap analysis – Identification of required changes, sequencing, and delivery roadmap to bridge from current to target state.

Our holistic approach allows clients to not only reduce costs and increase efficiency but also to unlock new sources of growth and profitability.

Next Steps

PryceWilliams provides specialist consulting and project delivery services for investment management firms with strategic change, regulatory compliance and technology transformation needs. If your organisation is considering a TOM transformation driven by strategic, regulatory, or technological change, contact us to make progress happen.